Publisher's Synopsis
Drawing from a wide variety of human societies and prey species, this book seeks to validate the importance of mortality studies for understanding modern and prehistoric human ecology. In a presentation that sets out to be both methodologically and theoretically innovative, the contributors combine archaeological and actualistic approaches with seasonal and longer-term demographic cycles and the controlled integration of mortality data with other classes on information. The aim is to offer detailed accounts of how age patterns in death assemblages can be influenced by human technology, biological and physiological characteristics of prey species, food distributions and nutritional returns.
